Pretty Like You
by Kimsibobs
Summary: Young Elphaba plays with make-up and talks to her mother about the new baby.


_I wrote this a while ago and decided to post it without making changes. I hope you enjoy it! The relationship here is very different from the one with which we are familiar, but I like thinking that Elphie could have had something different with her mother than she did with her father. I do not own Wicked._

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"Elphaba, what are you doing?" Mrs. Thropp's voice called across the bedroom. The little green two-year-old was sitting at her vanity table and had covered her face in every powder, cream, and color within her reach. This image was all too common, and as her mother slowly approached, her face turned from stern to amused.

"Now I'm pretty like you!" Elphaba shrieked with glee, holding out a tube of lipstick to her mother and pointlessly smoothing her stained white dress.

"Pretty like me, huh?" Mrs. Thropp replied kindly, picking up the child. "Why, I think you're pretty just the way you are." She nuzzled Elphaba's nose with her own. She sat down in her nearby rocking chair and tried to put her daughter on her lap, but there simply wasn't room there anymore. The green toddler, small for her age, ended up sitting next to her mother and pressing her ear against the swollen belly.

"You're not supposed to play in Mommy's make-up, remember?"

"Green," Elphaba huffed in protest.

"Yes, honey, green," she replied impatiently, "but you need to stop playing in Mommy's makeup all the time. Green is good. Look what I bought today."

She plucked her purse off the table next to her and pulled out a white plastic bag. Mommy's make-up always came in white plastic bags, so Elphaba leaned over to see what new toy her mother had for her. Mrs. Thropp turned to Elphaba looking like she had some sort of secret and said, "Close your eyes, it's a surprise."

When it came to make-up and toys Elphaba believed in surprises, so she dutifully closed her eyes and covered them with her little green hands. She felt her mother's arms moving and knew she was putting the make-up on, but the toddler wouldn't take her hands away from her eyes until it was time.

"Okay, open your eyes." Elphaba looked into her mother's face with delight and squealed when she saw what had been added. The skin above each of Mrs. Thropp's eyes had been smeared with a large yet tasteful amount of green eye shadow. Elphaba clapped and stood up on the rocking chair to touch her mother's face.

"Careful," Mrs. Thropp warned. Elphaba had to lean over the big belly to get her fingers on the eyelids. Mommy had made herself green on purpose! The child gently slid her thumb along her mothers green eyelid, smearing the make-up just slightly, then wiggled back into the space between her mother and the arm of the chair. She put both hands and an ear against her mother's belly.

"Nessarose," the toddler whispered.

"Is your sister Nessarose finally kicking in there?" Mrs. Thropp asked her first born. "She'll come in a few weeks"

"Sister Nessarose," she whispered again, her hands and ear on the unmoving belly. Would Nessarose be green?

"Is Nessarose like me?" she asked.

"Like you? Well, she'll be smaller than you. But you'll both be my little girls."

No, that wasn't what Elphaba meant at all. She tried again, "Does Nessarose look like me?"

Mrs. Thropp sighed. "I don't think so, Elphaba. She'll have skin like mine and Daddy's. He'll be so happy about that." She sighed again and turned her head away from Elphaba. "But honey, as long as my girls are my girls," she continued, turning back to the green girl and smiling, "I don't care if they're green or tan or pink or striped or polka-dot!"

At this she stood and picked Elphaba up. Steadying her little girl on her hip, Mrs. Thropp spun around a few times laughing and smiling. The little green child smiled and laughed too. When her mother stopped spinning her and rocked her daughter in her arms, Elphaba looked again at the painted eyelids.

"Green." she said again.

"Green," Mrs. Thropp said back. "I love my little green Elphaba."


End file.
